Texting Guffaws

We live in a day and age when texting reigns supreme.

Unless you’re my parents
– who still don’t have texting ability on their flip-phone –
just about everyone who has a cell phone texts.

We keep in contact with teachers, coaches, real estate agents, coworkers, friends, family and many others
via this easy to reach medium.

I remember when Belle was in high school and she was texting friends.
We had to sign up for the “unlimited texting” plan on our cell phones, or go broke paying for them.
One month, she sent about 15,000 texts to her friends.
Yes.
I typed that correctly.
Fifteen Thousand texts….
in one month!!!!

We would watch her fast fingers in awe.
She could hold her phone in her hand and her thumbs would fly over the keys.
She wouldn’t even need to look down at the screen to know what she was typing.
She’d take one glance to know she got it right and then hit ‘send’.
The replies were almost instantaneous from her friends.

Yet, it was still something that was reserved for the younger generation.
I didn’t text much in the mid 2000’s.
The month Belle generated 15,000 texts, I only sent about 100 texts.
If I needed to “talk” to someone, I would phone them or send an email.

Gradually, as cell phones improved and as “smart phones” came into common usage,
I began texting too.
Now, I might send a couple thousand texts in a month.
There are some months I probably send more texts than Belle
(we still pay for her cell phone).

Now, I text more than I make phone calls or email.

With the increased texting, however, comes increasing chances of making mistakes.
I’m talking about the mistake of sending a text to one person,
thinking you’ve sent the text to another person.

It can be embarrassing!

Flynn and I got a huge laugh over one of his co-workers in Mordor who sent him a very sweet text.
”I Love You!”
is what the text read.
Within a few minutes, the very embarrassed co-worker sent another text.
”Ooops! I meant to send that to my wife!”

We laughed and laughed at this hapless co-worker for a long time.
Until….
yep, you got it….
it happened to us.

We were in the process of purchasing an investment property (a rental house) and Flynn
accidentally texted,
”I love you”
to our real estate agent.

She was so sweet about it.
She teased him
and of course I teased him mercilessly about it.
But it was enough to stop us laughing at and making fun of his co-worker.

Then it happened to me.
One night, I started texting Flynn, sending him silly little texts about the wind blowing, and the weather
and terrible roads.
It was 11:30 pm.
Pretty late.
He’s usually asleep by then, so when I didn’t get a reply, I wasn’t concerned.
I ended with an emphatic
”I LOVE YOU!”
and went to sleep.

The next morning, I got a nice reply.
From Scooter’s best friend’s mom.
”Do you really love me?”

Oh dear!
My face was red!

There have been a few more instances when this has happened.
I have worked very hard on being very vigilant and looking at the names before I hit ‘send’ on a text.
So, it doesn’t happen very often.
Flynn does the same.
But every once in a while, we get tired and let our guard down.

I think the funniest instance happened a couple weeks ago.

Flynn texts me every morning.
”Good morning.”
This particular morning, he added something special to his message.
”Good morning, sexy!”
was his message.

He didn’t hear back from me for a long time.
He wondered why.
When he finally got a return text he understood.
And he wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.

”Ummm…. hello.”

It was from his boss.